page_title: Howden
section_title: 20th century
hierarchical_section_title: Howden / 20th century
caption_attribution_description: English: No.78, Hailgate, Howden, East Riding of Yorkshire, England.Blue plaque honoring Nevil Shute. This image represents an Open Plaques entry&#160;#9401.
context_page_description: Howden is a small historic market town and civil parish in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. It lies in the Vale of York to the north of the M62, on the A614 road about 16 miles south-east of York and 3 miles north of Goole, which lies across the River Ouse.
  William the Conqueror gave the town to the Bishops of Durham in 1080. The wapentake of Howdenshire was named after the town, and remained an exclave of County Durham until as late as 1846. The original boundaries of the wapentake were used for the current two government wards of Howden and Howdenshire, which had a combined population of 19,753 at the 2011 census.
context_section_description: During the First World War the British Admiralty needed a suitable site in north-east England for a new airship station to protect the ports and ships from the threat of attack by German U-boats. RNAS Howden opened in 1916 with its airship hangars. It provided not only protection for shipping along the east coast, but also jobs for hundreds of civilians. This helped to turn round the town's fortunes, which had been suffering since the building of the port at nearby Goole, and the passing of the horse fairs.
  The airship station was closed following the abandonment of rigid airship development after the war and sold to a private developer, but with the establishment of the Imperial Airship Scheme in 1924 was bought by Vickers for the construction of the airship R100. The author Nevil Shute Norway was part of the team that created the R100, working under Barnes Wallis, the engineer and later designer of the Vickers Wellington bomber, and inventor of the bouncing bomb. Shute lived at number 78 Hailgate, and a plaque is now fixed to the house to commemorate this.
  Shute is not always popular in Howden, because of what he wrote in his autobiography:
  "The lads were what one would expect, straight from the plough, but the girls were an eye-opener. They were brutish and uncouth, filthy in appearance and in habits. Things may have changed since then – I hope they have. Perhaps the girls in very isolated districts such as that had less opportunity than their brothers for getting into the market and making contact with civilisation; I can only record the fact that these girls straight off the farms were the lowest types that I have ever seen in England, and incredibly foul-mouthed." 
   – Slide Rule: Autobiography of an Engineer, Nevil Shute, 1954.
  In 1932, Howden Minster's renovations were completed, and its bells chimed every 15 minutes, a tradition that continues to this day.
  It is popularly believed that on the night of 24 June 1954 the historian A. J. P. Taylor spent the night at the Wellington Hotel, and that he broke a water jug and a shaving mirror while staying there. However, this is untrue, as Taylor spent the night at the Bowman's Hotel, next door to the Wellington. It is also untrue that he broke the jug and mirror. Instead, he broke his wrist falling from the unusually high bed.
  In the latter part of the mid-20th century, two banks and a Co-op, the town's largest grocery store, opened, giving the people of Howden a more convenient infrastructure.
caption: The plaque commemorating Nevil Shute on 78, Hailgate
exif: {"Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "Canon PowerShot SX170 IS", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "180", "Image YResolution": "180", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image DateTime": "2014:12:16 20:36:08", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "2318", "GPS GPSVersionID": "[2, 3, 0, 0]", "Image GPSInfo": "9250", "Image Padding": "[]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "180", "Thumbnail YResolution": "180", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "9364", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "16468", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/320", "EXIF FNumber": "9/2", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "125", "EXIF SensitivityType": "Standard Output Sensitivity and Recommended Exposure Index", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0230", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2014:10:22 11:27:39", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2014:10:22 11:27:39", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "3", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "133/16", "EXIF ApertureValue": "139/32", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "139/32", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "5537/500", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "00", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "00", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2328", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1989", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "Interoperability RelatedImageWidth": "3264", "Interoperability RelatedImageLength": "2448", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "9146", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "1632000/121", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "1224000/91", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "2", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF CameraOwnerName": "", "EXIF Padding": "[]", "EXIF OffsetSchema": "0"}